


A Far Better Thing

by irrelevant



Category: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-10
Updated: 2010-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the XI universe, but this is all about the original Trinity.  Spock contemplates the nature of loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Far Better Thing

In the desert, morning air is cold and dry and active. It tangles robes around unsteady legs and kicks fine blue sand up over sandaled feet. It burns old lungs unused to breathing anything but a Federation starship's closely regulated oxygen mix. He is panting when he reaches the mesa but considers the end result to be worth the discomfort. This walk, the rise of twin suns over purple rock, they are two of a very few pleasures left him.

Long ago on an Earth he will never see again, accompanied by two of the most remarkable beings he's been privileged to know he walked and climbed the chasms and plateaus of one of the strangest, most visually appealing geological phenomena he has ever seen. He remembers standing then as he stands now on the edge of a precipice very like the one he encountered on that occasion. There is much the same about this day and place as that which is long gone, but still more that is different.

This planet is not Earth. The stone under his feet is not red. Then, he was not alone. Today he is.

Physically he will not remain alone for long. In five point six minutes T'Khut will have risen fully, to be followed ten point two one minutes later by Saamekh. Ten minutes after Saamekh has cleared the L-langon Sh'vok range, T'Pring will begin her trek up the path to the mesa. From the path's foot she will close with his present position in approximately nineteen minutes; he will not see her. She will stop perhaps eight meters behind him and kneel as he is kneeling, neither together nor apart in meditation.

When he rises to leave she will be gone. He will not have heard her go, but he will know when she leaves. He will have felt the faint passage of her thoughts.

It is strange after all these years to have accepted once more the role of teacher. Even stranger that his protégée is she who in another time—indeed, another life—might have been his wife. Here she is merely his student, and something more: she is one of the last acolytes of Gol to have been trained by T'Sai, dead five years now along with most of Vulcan.

She calls him Selek, as do they all. A kolinahru has no need for titles or any name but his own, and in some ways Selek is more his than the name given him at birth. This one he chose for himself, twice. As he also chose…other things.

You cannot choose your family, but you can choose your friends. A human thought construct, certainly, but nonetheless true. Humans make much of choice: having, being offered, giving, making. Here in the latter days of his life he once again finds himself with a name belonging to someone who never truly existed, pursuing a task that should never have been necessary. Although he came to them by way of many choices that were not his to make, both name and task were his to choose, and choose them he did.

_…but…_

Even in his own mind he hears the qualifier. There is always a but, as his mother often said, especially with humans and Tellarites. In this he is very human.

The corners of his mouth twitch even as he controls the emotion, settling it deep within those portions of his mind he has not visited in more than three-quarters of a Terran century. He tilts his head, following T'Khut's ascension. Class M planets are not as prevalent in binary systems as in planetary systems with single stars, but the Tau Lyra system possesses not only one class M, but two. The first, MT-1334, is lush and green, even more so than Terra, with a land/water split that approximates Earth's closely. The second is—somewhat different. Class M, yes, but with much less water and a thinner atmosphere. Humans do not breathe easily on MK-2265. Vulcans find the air piquant. Or at least one Vulcan does. He doubts many others of his kind would use his preferred descriptive.

He can think of two who might have, but though both of them are still alive within this skewed continuity, neither of them would presently appreciate nor understand his word choice.

He knows of two others, neither of them Vulcan, who would have listened to him with, respectively, amusement and astonishment, then thrown their heads back and filled the cold blue air with human laughter. After which one of them would have undoubtedly found it necessary administer Tri-ox injections to them both. Almost he can hear fading laughter and the invective and hypo hissing that would follow; so clear are the sounds that he is surprised when he opens his eyes to a mesa clean of any life but his own. Surprised and...disappointed?

Yes, disappointment. It is a sensation he has become far too familiar with over the years, and while he long ago identified its source he sees no resolution. Once he might have, but he is weary and too old to begin anew. He has used up his allotment of new beginnings.

_And what kind of defeatist, fool attitude is that? Who was it who suggested we go traipsing through the centuries looking for whales? Not me, that's for damn sure!_

Bones. He mouths the name, eyes closed tightly against what he will not see if he opens them. He never used it, not when they were all alive and together. Only once, after _Enterprise-B_ returned without…without.

He is without, has been for what seems to him an endless length of time, and he foresees the questionable pleasure of further deprivation. The healers tell him there is no reason he should not see his two-hundredth year. No reason except, perhaps, desire.

Given the right circumstances and variables time becomes a prison. The circumstances were unforeseen, the variables unpredictable. Unpredictable to him, in any case. He has seen too much to believe his experience preeminent.

His robe flaps loosely against his knees and he tucks it in closer around his folded legs. Wind speed has increased by, he estimates, one point four knots. Behind his closed eyes T'Khut's rising turns his lids a strange green. He leaves them closed. Without the anchor of sight other, phantom sensations become more acute. A knee nudging his own, or perhaps an elbow—a discreet jab at his ribs when no one is looking. _What do you say we grab himself and ditch this shindig? I know a little place down on Twenty-third that serves the good stuff—the kind that doesn't see customs, if you know what I mean._

Had they gone? He cannot remember. No matter. If they did not then there were many other opportunities, many other official functions to abandon.

_Damn straight._

Leonard, he thinks. Leonard, I—

_It's okay, Spock._ Low and rusty, just an edge of laughter. The brush of long, surgeon's fingers against his shaggy, too-long hair. _They're gonna be okay, trust me. You can let go now. Hey, you tell him, this green-blooded bastard never believes a word I say._

He cannot breathe. His lungs and heart have seized, cardiovascular muscles strain to answer nervous response, but there is no response, can be none.

Presence, so long felt yet not felt. Hands cupping his shoulders as they have so many times before. He is held in a grip he could easily break but never shall. _Spock. It's all right, my friend. It will be…all right._

Spock, son of Sarek, son of Skon, son of Solkar, opens his eyes. And smiles.

\---

She finds him lying on his side on dark blue sand, his head propped against his arm as though he is only resting and will momentarily rise and speak her name.

He is not sleeping. She knows before she touches her fingers to the meld points that he is gone; more, his katra is gone, and she feels the loss in the only way she can, the way of an acolyte who sees vast knowledge and experience lost without hope of retrieval.

She closes his eyes. And then, for there is nothing else to be done for him until First Wake, she kneels beside him and watches Saamekh rise up over the horizon.


End file.
